Rehashing the past?

When I saw the headline in The Gleaner dated February 7, 2015 declaring, 'Take over idle lands - 'Hugo' Buchanan', I thought I had been transported back to the past.

Why do politicians always concentrate on reinventing the wheel?

Why can't the Buchanans of Jamaica put their minds to coming up with strategies to get the hundreds of thousands of acres of Crown land into production and to provide housing for those poor people who contribute to the National Housing Trust but can never acquire a home or even a house lot before casting a grudgeful eye on people's private property?

For Mr Buchanan's information, there are good projects being undertaken by Farm Up Jamaica, 'One One Coco', and, probably, others that I am not aware of that could probably benefit from the Government's horde of idle lands, thus providing a good income for young farmers.

So let's have some creative thinking before even contemplating returning to the counterproductive days of trying to capture privately owned land.

Haywood Hall, St. Mary and River Mummas

Yesterday we had a really nice ride to Haywood Hall in St. Mary which has a really long river with swimming areas above and below the fording. This outing was arranged by one of the the St. Mary men  in F&T, Alrick Rpbinson. He did his part well and the problems which we had with food, was caused by a breakdown at the Haywood Hall end, nothing to do with the planning from his end.

Haywood Hall river is a tributary of the Paget river.

This area is approximately four miles from Port Maria  and 36 miles from Kingston. Trich and I accompanied Alrick when the area was being scouted out for the ride some months ago.

That was when we met Norma, an absolutely beautiful back woman of around 40 years old who said she is a photographic model living in  Germany.

She was born  at Haywood Hall  (as was the film star Ester Anderson who acted for years in the series "The Avengers.")  She is now developing the area where we went as an eco-tourism park.

She has already cleared the section by the river, set up wooden lounge chairs by the river, installed a small stage and a nice clean bathroom. It was on that trip that we learnt the legend of river mummas at Haywood Hall.

Wooden lounge chairs line the river side

RiverMumma is the Jamaican river equivalent of mermaids which are said to live in the oceans.

These are ghost like, beautiful women with long hair who occasionally rise from the deep to sit on the rocks and comb their long tresses. According to folk lore, if you look directly at the river mumma, it can bring all kinds of problems including you falling into the river and drowning.

Since it is a ghostly creature, it is therefore not surprising that only children have ever see one and both Norma and Mr. Ellis, who was supposed to arrange the St. Mary part of things as Norma had to go back to Germany, claim they had actually seen one when they were children.

Mr. Ellis poses with his son and daughter in law

   

These river mummas are said to live in a bottomless area at the eastern side of the fording but as the water was cloudy on that side as they are repairing the fording, we went swimming in the western section.

I guess that is why we never saw any river mummas yesterday!

Brian enjoying the river

I Ireally enjoyed the ride through Junction which has become one of my favourite routes to ride as road is undulating, paved and well shaded. 

I rode with Andrew and Charles the 1st all the away  to Agualta Vale. They are really good company and stayed with me all the way.

At Agualta Vale I decided to drive as I find the north coast highway too void of trees and hot and always shy away from riding in the blaring sun.

 Andrew joined me in the support vehicle being driven by Stanford and Charles went in his own SUV. When we got to the entrance to the destination, we jumped back on to the bicycles for the approximately two mile journey there.

When we got there only a few members of the A team had arrived including Bernadette the only woman who could keep up with with the fast ones.

Alrick consults with Bernadette and Barry

Soon all the other riders filed in  by one.

Apart from some 30 riders, there were approximately 20 hikers, most recruited by Chuck from the outdoor lovers at Stella Maris. The walk  however proved too strenuous for most of them so they gave in to support vehicles one by one.

From we arrived, there was delicious hot chocolate waiting on us as well as potato pudding, cornmeal pudding and blue draws, aka tire leaf. This is a mixture of sweet potato and cornmeal with other ingredients that make up puddings, cooked in coconut milk, then it is tied up in banana leaves and boiled.

It is rarely seen these days as not many modern cooks have acquired the skill to make it. But it was popular in the days of our grandparents when people had lots of time to sit around and make all sorts of delicacies. Unfortunately most of these recipes are lost to the younger generation but I really enjoyed getting this after so many years.

Unfortunately though, the cook  that Mr. Ellis had, got it all wrong for there was the dessert ready from we got there but could we could not get our breakfast! For he kept cooking small amounts of fried  johhny cakes, saltfish and cabbage etc and before you turned around, it was all gone as everyone was starving and wanted their full breakfast. That cook is a disaster, for the food was nice but he had no idea about time, what had to be done first and how to cater for a large group!

What did we do before those smart phones were invented, I wonder lol?

Fact is at noon, he had not even peeled the bananas for the mackerel and bananas which so many people had ordered and the ackee and saltfish, the other popular dish that he had prepared, was so inadequate that not even ten people were able to get any.

This really made a number of people very angry and some even drove to Port Maria to buy KFC .

I had run dung salt fish for the first time and really found it delicious but there was just no food available to go with that small dish either. Although I think I now prefer run dung saltfish to run dung mackrel but that could be causerie I was so hungry !

I left there about 1 pm in Nicole's car,  along with Stewart, my cousin Sheila and Maurice Brown. I suspect all the others left shortly after.

Hanging out with Diana, Carol and cousin Sheila

Luckily I had gone to the river early and had a wonderful swim and  later got in a couple games of dominoes while picking at the food as it was being slowly prepared. Those who came back from the river later had every reason to be angry as the there was no food ready for them at noon after Alrick had even gone to the trouble of printing food tickets with "FNT' on them! Unfortunately the food part was  really a flop because of bad  organisation at the Haywood Hall end.

I told Mr. Ellis that if he keeps that chef, he is going to go into bankruptcy at the get go, for this was the very first group catering session and it went awry. Word of mouth can be great or devastating!

Anyway, I had  a great ride and really enjoyed the desserts, the great country chocolate tea and of course the ride, the river, the camaraderie and dominoes.

Christian

The star of this ride was a little boy named Christian who is only nine years old and I bet that in ten years he going to win Tour De France (if he continues at the rate he is going.)
For not only did he ride up the entire Stony Hill road without stopping but I also hear he never even took a rest stop for the entire 36 mile journey. Wow, am I impressed!

 Another Sunday well spent .

The Real Garden of Eden

If a real Garden of Eden exists, it is right here in the Rio Grande valley in Portland for there is yet to be another more peaceful, scenic, lush place in the world. 

The distance from Berridale, where you start rafting, to Port Antonio is eleven miles but by river it is only eight. And it is eight miles of sheer peace, beauty and tranquility.

Pat relaxes

Where you take the raft is across from the district of Burbank which lies to the south of the river. The Parish council operates a raft free of cost for the residents of that district as during the rainy season., the river really gets deep so they cannot cross by foot.

The one time we hiked to that area to visit Scatter Falls and the Fire cave, the river was really low so we just swam across.

The captains have to be very adept to navigate through the shallow areas

This Saturday when we went rafting, the river was indeed low too and that made you realise that the captains need great skill and not just strength to navigate that eight miles down to Rafters Rest.

My cousin Sheila and I had a ball

Our captain was Dennis, was a very nice guy. He said he has been rafting from he was about eight years old and he and his friends started building their own rafts  which they fished from.

He said his father is also a raftsman but because business is not very good, with most of them not getting more than one trip per week, he does farming in the hills, growing bananas coco and dasheen.

Poor Portland, they did great business in the good old days but because cruise ships are now super liners, that port cannot accommodate them so tourism there has gotten a real beating.

Dennis at work

He says before you can become a licensed captain to take visitors down the river, you start as an apprentice bringing the rafts back from Rafters Rest back to Berridale. This means polling most of the way up but to get up the rapids they have to get off and pull up the raft up by rope.

I had always thought these rafts lasted years, but he told me they only last about four months as when the bamboo starts to split it becomes water logged.

Amrita and family

As I had seen the rafters at Martha Brae carrying back their rafts by trailer, I asked him whey they don't do that in Portland but he  said when you pack them on top of each other, they do not even last three months!

For this trip, we had been invited by Charles as his sisters Diana and Amarita  were here with their families.Nine of us took the four hour trek including my cousin Sheila who is here from Canada.

The Rio Grande valley is surrounded by part of the Blue and John Crow mountains and now I see why it is called John Crow mountains.

Lovers Lane on the Rio Grande

John Crow is the Jamaican name for our vulture  and they abound there apparently. All along the river we saw them cooling off  in the water and hunting for rotten bait left by the numerous fishermen who make their living fishing for mud fish, snooker, mullet, jack etc in the Rio Grande.

About half way down,  shortly after you pass through Lovers lane, a lady by the name of Belinda has set up the most wonderful restaurant by the river bank.

There we  had the nicest lunch I have had for many years. Yes it was rice and peas and chicken, but real country chicken which has a much better taste than  commercial chicken. She also had the most delicious cray fish cooked in coconut milk. 

Boy I could eat some more  right now!

Ready to eat again

It is back breaking work for Belinda though as she lies in Stony Hill in the hills overlooking the Rio Grande valley and has to bring down the ingredients by foot daily. She says she stores her pots on site however.

So many people depend on that river to make a living. There as a lady on the way down too who had cool drinks and coconuts on her raft.

Pat was her best customer.

It was an absolutely wonderful day of camaraderie, swimming,m ,eating and of course falling asleep because of "itis" before we reached our destination!

 

An absolutely beautiful valley

Selling drinks and coconut from a raft

Unforgetable Road Trips

Easter 2015, I went on a really great road trip, probably the best since the we did that wonderful one way back in the 70's, travelling from Ontario to Panama.

 My great regret is that we never had blogs in those days and I have forgotten so much about that trip and really have no photos. There are some things that are indelibly etched  in my mind however so I better record them now before it all fades away!

Main Street, Taos,

To begin with, we left Toronto in September of that year, just as the first signs of winter were beginning to appear. We headed out in a convertible MG Midget, a British car which really did not love the snow so while we had it in Toronto we spent many mornings "jump starting" it as by the time it was ready to turn over on the cold mornings, the battery was dead.

Apart from our clothes, the only things we had on the trip were a stove, tent and sleeping bag. My first memory was of camping somewhere in Ohio and having to pack up quickly and leave in the middle of the night as snow started to fall.

 My other bad memory was getting a puncture (the only problem we had with our car) in the middle of a snow storm in  Dallas, Texas, the first they were having in about 10 years, but it had to be when  we were there!

How can I forget my first exposure to gambling too. There we were in Las Vegas with the bright lights, fantastic shows and best of all, money clinking from all the machines. We were overwhelmed by the sheer excitement in the place but were conscious enough to store our money in our tent and only take a few dollars into the casino.

The Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi

 Problem was that went very quickly and stupidly we went back and raided our tent of all our savings only to lose it all. The good thing though is it cured me of gambling forever,  for although I have been  to Las Vegas a couple times as I love the ambiance and the shows, I never take more than $ 10 with me and when it is done it is done!
After that escapade in Las Vegas though we barely had enough gas money to travel to California where we decided to hang out and work for  a month to get some money to travel on.

 I recall how difficult it was to cross from San Diego over to Mexico for although our papers were in good order, immigration kept sending us back. It took us almost a day to realise that all the guy wanted to let us in was a bribe of a couple US dollars!

Statue of the fist native american nun to serve in Santa Fe

We got a far better reception in Guadalajara though for as we drove into the town, we saw a group of young people around our age in an American convertible car and seeing our Canadian licence plate they welcomed us profusely. That night they took us partying and introduced us to tequila and marijuana which they claimed was better than Jamaican ganja.
Problem is, I had never seen ganja in Jamaica much less use it, so I could not compare.

I recall though we had a wonderful time hanging out in Mexico, travelling all over and staying extra days in places we liked. I can never forget the time we drove away from our hotel to explore and forgot the name of our hotel and the street it was on.

Luckily we had marked it on the map and night had caught us so we stopped under a street light to try and find out where we were.Soon we were confronted by an angry policeman for it turned out we were under a "no stopping" sign. But when he discovered we were strangers and lost, he found the place on our map for us, turned on his siren and led us home. And he did not want a bribe either.

Guatemala was then a place of bribes for it was then under marital law at the time. So it felt like every couple miles we drove, we were stopped by fierce soldiers who it turned out just wanted some Yankee dollars.

Quaint Shiprock mountain in Navajo territory

I recall how backward Honduras was at that time so we never tarried there. But we got a great reception in San Salvador at a hotel we stayed. At first no one knew where Jamaica was but when we told them it was next door to Cuba, we were treated as instant celebrities as Che Guevara was very popular in  the region at the  time.

We spent the most time in Panama because we had met a San Blas Indian named John, who worked in the American run canal zone and he "adopted" us and took us on tour of quite a few of the San Blas islands.

 We had to ship our car from Panama to Jamaica as after that the rest of the way to Colombia and Venezuela was by air and sea.

That was my greatest road trip and my only regret is that I could not blog about it at the time.

This time I am writing every thing down!

My daughter's family and I headed south to New Mexico from Denver Easter 2015. Our first stop was in Trinidad, Colorado a nice little old mining town.

The huge sand formations are breathtaking

Unfortunately as it was Sunday, so everything was closed but we did find a great Italian restaurant which advertised that it had singing waitresses. Well it sure did for about every fifteen minutes a waitress, the owner or his young grand-daughter would burst into song and it was great singing and wonderful food too.

It was late night and dark when we reached our first stop at Taos, New Mexico.

To get there, we traveled through the little town of Eagles Nest which rises to almost 9,000 feet above sea level.This is the home of the Hopi Indians and there they give much honour to Kit Carson who was a famous frontiersman man and trapper.

Four corners monument

Taos  is an attractive town in the Sangre De Cristo Mountains, a popular ski resort famous for or its Mexican/native American architecture and fantastic art. It is also america's oldest continuously inhabited town and of course the main inhabitants are American Indians or more politically correct, Native Americans. It was there I saw the amusing t shirt declaring  "We have been fighting terrorism since 1492". Not only amusing but appropriate I thought.

I would really like to go there in the daytime for it appears we travelled though at least two wonderful and scenic national parks as you could see the vast pine trees in the night and even saw a couple herds of elands along the roadside. The roads were winding and narrow really reminding me of home too.

Breathtaking sand formations

Our next stop was the famous Santa Fe with its world renowned railroad and all. Everything you read about Santa Fe is true in terms of its adobe architecture and vast art galleries.

One of the most fabulous structures is the St. Francis of Assisi cathedral. It is really an inspiring place.
The entire old Santa Fe is really a wonderful place to visit and we spent the entire morning drinking up the beauty .

When you leave Santa Fe, the landscape is really what we used to hear being called the "badlands" in cowboy movies. Most were Indian reservations, extremely arid and real dessert surrounded by high mountains.

Despite it dryness it has its own beauty especially when  you look at the wonderful formations of the surrounding mountains. We passed through quaint Spanish looking villages with names like Salida, Panama, Cuba and sampled Mexican or native American food at every opportunity.

Next Stop was the famous Four Corners. This is where the four states, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Utah meet. Unfortunately we arrived there just ten minutes before they closed so we missed the exhibits.

The site is controlled by the Navajo, Huti and Ute and they display a range of native art and do a whopping business.

Awesome view from the top of Mesa Verde

We left Four Corners and entered Colorado heading towards Mesa Verde through mainly desert territory. You know it is clear that after the native Americans were subdued, there were put on the most arid and unproductive land and southern Colorado and new Mexico has an overabundance of this type of terrain which still inhabited by the native Americans.

We spent the night in Cortes which is only 9 miles from Mesa Verde which was our main destination.

Sun Temple

This is the first UNESCO  and largest archaeological preserve in then USA. It is said that there are over 4000 archaeological exhibits there but it is best known for its cliff dwellings which were built by the ancestral Puebloans between 600 and 1300 AD.

I first went there about thirty years ago but had forgotten how awesome it was. These Indians were subsistence farmers and the 81 square mile national park is made up of the most awesome canyons but because it is an arid area, it is subjected to a lot of forest fires.

The site is breathtaking though with not only the dwellings carved out of the mountain sides but also temples and palaces which seemed to have been used for various ceremonies.

Cliff Dwellings

When  we reluctantly left Mesa Verde  we travelled through the pine covered San Pedro Mountains to Durango.

When I had visited Durango many years ago, it used to be a main set for many western movies but now that those are no longer being made, it has become a quaint mining town which attracts tourist from all over.

Chimney Rock in Colorado 

There they have quite a wide range of gift shops and a large variety of restaurants. The town has  also become known for outdoor activities including mountain climbing and mountain biking. It is high up in the San Juan mountains which made it quite cold while we were there in late April. There we stayed at the charming, family owned  historic Strater hotel.

Old rail car in Salida

Our most interesting stop the way back was was for lunch at Salida, a sleepy former  mining town which is 9000 feet above sea level so  also cold and breezy in April.

However they are famous for Sasquatch and UFO sightings.

The road back was through the snow covered Rocky mountains with its thousands of acres of pine trees and impressive flora.

The San Juan mountains rise to 6,500 feet

We traveled through South Park which is the town that the television series is named after and by the time we got to Morrison we were reminded that it snows in Colorado!

But who cares, by then I had been ready to relax indoors after a really wonderful road trump,.